Nation & World

Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama

Andrew Harnik / AP

In this Sept. 28, 2015 file photo, President Barack Obama shakes hands with Russian President President Vladimir Putin at United Nations headquarters. Obama has ordered intelligence officials to conduct a broad review on suspected election-season hacking by Russians.

In this Sept. 28, 2015 file photo, President Barack Obama shakes hands with Russian President President Vladimir Putin at United Nations headquarters. Obama has ordered intelligence officials to conduct a broad review on suspected election-season hacking by Russians.

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Dylann Roof wanted the world to know he hated black people and thought they were criminals. He thought about attacking drug dealers, but they might shoot back. So, he told the FBI, he picked a historic black church in Charleston he had learned about online. In a videotaped confession shown Friday...

President Barack Obama has ordered intelligence officials to conduct a broad review of election-season cyberattacks, including the email hacks that rattled the presidential campaign and raised fresh concerns about Russia's meddling in U.S. elections, the White House said Friday. The review, led...

President Barack Obama responded to appeals from Alaska Native villages and gave them more of a say in the federal management of marine resources of the Bering Sea. Obama signed an executive order Friday to create a Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area that will focus "locally tailored"...

President-elect Donald Trump shut down some of his companies in the days after the election, including four that appeared connected to a possible Saudi Arabia business venture, according to corporate registrations in Delaware. News of the move comes days before Trump was expected to describe changes...

John Glenn will lie in state in Ohio's capitol building before a celebration of his life of military and government service and two history-making voyages into space. The public viewing at the Ohio Statehouse and a memorial service at Ohio State University's Mershon Auditorium are planned for late...

In the heat of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump accused primary rival Ted Cruz of being controlled by Goldman Sachs because his wife, Heidi, previously worked for the Wall Street giant. He slammed Hillary Clinton for receiving speaking fees from the bank. "I know the guys at Goldman Sachs....

President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency has gone to court to stop its enforcement efforts. His pick for secretary of education has been accused of trying to undermine traditional public schools, while his choice for Housing and Urban Development has questioned...

Days before he died Thursday at age 95, John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, wrote a letter to another space enthusiast-Jeff Bezos-who has said watching the moon landing at age 5 was a seminal moment and one of the reasons he founded his space company, Blue Origin.

Populist anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders was found guilty Friday of insulting and inciting discrimination against Moroccans, a conviction he immediately slammed as a "shameful" attack on free speech and an attempt to "neutralize" him. Presiding Judge Hendrik Steenhuis said the court would not...

The room for rent last summer inside the converted warehouse at 1919 Market St. in West Oakland had all the magic of an artists colony that Sam Code wanted. Code, who sang and played guitar in bands, was drawn to the three floors of lofts connected by a network of ladders, hidden nooks and crannies,...

The quest to unearth the Manhattan moderate that may lie deep within Donald Trump's psyche runs directly through his daughter, Ivanka. This, at least, is the impression that she has given over the past few weeks, brokering meetings between the president-elect and environmentalists such as former...

Hundreds of Syrian civilians streamed out on foot from the eastern part of the city of Aleppo on Friday in the wake of the relentless campaign by government troops and their allies to drive rebels from their rapidly crumbling enclave. The exodus came a day after Russia announced that the Syrian...

A new report into systematic Russian doping details a wide-ranging "institutional conspiracy" that involved more than 1,000 athletes across more than 30 sports, including evidence corroborating large-scale sample swapping at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard...

Thirteen minutes into his execution by injection, an Alabama inmate heaved and coughed and appeared to move during tests meant to determine consciousness.Ronald Bert Smith Jr., 45, was finally pronounced dead at 11:05 p.m. Thursday night — about 30 minutes after the procedure began at the state...

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Friday made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan to consult with military commanders and deliver a pre-holiday pep talk to U.S. troops. It is Carter's last planned trip to Afghanistan before handing off his Pentagon responsibilities to his designated successor,...

About a year ago, 18-year-old college student Lauren Batchelder stood up at a political forum in New Hampshire and told Donald Trump that she didn't think he was "a friend to women." The next morning, Trump fired back on Twitter - calling Batchelder an "arrogant young woman" and accusing her of...

A second Georgia police officer died Thursday, a day after being shot alongside a fellow officer who was a lifelong friend, and the hunt for the suspected gunman ended when a SWAT team found the fugitive dead — apparently by his own hand — inside a home where he was hiding. Officer Jody Smith initially...

The North Carolina man who took an assault rifle to a popular Washington, D.C., pizza joint to investigate a fictitious online rumor demonstrates a problem that has long vexed the FBI. The Internet - a breeding ground for radical ideologies and bizarre conspiracy theories - can quickly move troubled...

John Glenn, whose 1962 flight as the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth made him an all-American hero and propelled him to a long career in the U.S. Senate, died Thursday. The last survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts was 95.

Donald Trump will continue to hold the title of executive producer for the television show "The Celebrity Apprentice" after taking office, foreshadowing an unorthodox presidency in which the commander in chief has a hand in the world of reality TV. Trump's name will be listed in the credits of...

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, a vocal critic of substantially increasing the minimum wage and an opponent of rules that would make more workers eligible for overtime pay, as head of the Labor Department, according to a Republican briefed on...

Donald Trump's pick for secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development says he doesn't plan to dismantle social safety-net programs. Dr. Ben Carson spoke Thursday night at Yale University, his alma mater. He told an audience made up mostly of Yale students that the suggestion he wants...

Leading Senate Republicans are preparing to launch a coordinated and wide-ranging probe into Russia's alleged meddling in the U.S. elections and its potential cyberthreats to the military, digging deep into what they view as corrosive interference in the nation's institutions. Such an aggressive...

Russia said the Syrian army was suspending combat operations in Aleppo late Thursday to allow for the evacuation of civilians from besieged rebel-held neighborhoods, but residents and fighters reported no let-up in the bombing and shelling campaign on the opposition's ever-shrinking enclave. Russian...

The illegally occupied Oakland warehouse where dozens of partygoers perished in a blaze does not appear in a database fire inspectors use to schedule inspections and may never have been checked for fire hazards, a firefighter with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press on Thursday....

More than 50,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, the most ever. The disastrous tally has been pushed to new heights by soaring abuse of heroin and prescription painkillers, a class of drugs known as opioids. Heroin deaths rose 23 percent in one year, to 12,989, slightly higher than...

Authorities say three people have died and 11 others are hurt following a pileup on a snow-slickened Interstate 96 near Lansing, Michigan. Lt. Eric Sanborn of the Livingston County Sheriff Department confirmed the three deaths Thursday in the pileup involving about 40 vehicles. He says 11 other...

In the midst of his Cabinet deliberations, President-elect Donald Trump flew to Ohio Thursday to meet with victims and families after the latest U.S. outbreak of violence, a somber duty that became all too familiar to his predecessor. In Columbus, he also had words of tribute for astronaut and...

Dylann Roof's mother suffered a heart attack not long after prosecutors described how her son planned a cold and calculated killing of nine black church members in a racially motivated attack, the white man's attorney said in court documents Thursday. Roof's mother collapsed and said "I'm sorry"...

For protesters fighting the Dakota Access pipeline, the messages from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation are confusing: The tribal chairman tells demonstrators that it's time to leave their camp and go home. Another leader implores them to stay through the bitter North Dakota winter. The conflicting...

The U.S. surgeon general is calling e-cigarettes an emerging public health threat to the nation's youth. In a report being released Thursday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy acknowledged a need for more research into the health effects of "vaping," but said e-cigarettes aren't harmless and too many...

Most read stories this hour

Jessie Grady walked into a Michaels store last week in Chicago to buy a Santa hat for her young daughter. She ended up witnessing — and filming — another customer's "unprovoked attack" in which the woman unloaded on black Michaels employees, claiming she was being discriminated against and declaring...

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At long last, rain fell on the scorched Appalachian town of Gatlinburg, Tenn., on Wednesday after savage wildfires blazed across eastern Tennessee, killing seven people, forcing thousands to evacuate and burning hundreds of homes to the ground. Yet even as rainstorms helped firefighters douse the...

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The Tribune's Brad Biggs answers your questions weekly. Any word if Deiondre' Hall will be back on the field this year? -- @stephenclapp1 Yes, I think there is a chance Hall gets back on the field. It might not happen this week. Hall returned to practice last week after sitting out the previous...

The judge in the murder trial of a white former patrolman who fatally shot a black motorist decided Wednesday to let the jury consider a lesser charge of manslaughter, meaning prosecutors won't have to prove the officer acted out of malice when he shot the fleeing man in the back. Michael Slager...

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'I wouldn't call myself a survivalist, just a realist," says "Craig," a financial analyst in Cincinnati. In his 30s, with a wife and baby, Craig keeps a cache of supplies in his basement: magnesium flint sticks for fire-starting, lightweight water filters, rechargeable flashlights, a portable 12-volt...

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